Wholesale Broadband Agreement (WBA)

21 November 2011

NBN Co has released the final draft edition of its Wholesale Broadband Agreement for consideration by the industry.  The WBA is the contractual vehicle NBN Co will use to supply all of its products and services¹ to its customers.  Once published as a Standard Form of Access Agreement, the WBA will have the regulatory purpose of "declaring" NBN Co's products and services as required under the Competition and Consumer Act.

In releasing the draft WBA today, NBN Co wishes to communicate a range of amendments introduced in response to customer feedback prior to publishing the documents as a Standard Form of Access Agreement, which NBN Co intends to do on 30 November 2011.  Today's release of the WBA also allows NBN Co to introduce additional detail on its operational processes coming out of the trial that has operated since April 2011 as well as its Fair Use Policy and an ongoing contract development process (see below).  NBN Co's Brand Guidelines will be provided shortly.

The complete list of documents released today is:

• the core terms and conditions of the WBA;
• the Product Catalogue;
• the Operations Manual;
• Credit Policy;
• Product Development Forum Processes;
• Contract Development Processes (New);
• Fair Use Policy (New); and
• Product Technical Specification underpinning NBN Co's Fibre Access Service, together with the details of NBN Co's transitional CVC pricing offer.

In the course of its detailed engagement with its customers (which has included hundreds of hours of face to face and public discussions), NBN Co was made aware that some in the industry were concerned by regulatory uncertainty in the absence of NBN Co's Special Access Undertaking (SAU).  In response to this concern, NBN Co has reduced the initial term of its WBA to 12 months and established a bilateral and multilateral Contract Development Process to further enhance the long term WBA whilst the SAU is being considered by the ACCC.  The WBA has also been amended to allow for more immediate improvements agreed as part of the Contract Development Process to be implemented.

Importantly, in the context of these commitments, NBN Co has also provided further commercial certainty to its customers by creating a mechanism that aligns the WBA and the SAU once the SAU has been accepted.  If, as part of the SAU process, the SAU and the WBA were to become inconsistent, the mechanism would allow customers to access the benefits of the regulated outcome should they choose to do so.

The package of amendments introduced in today's WBA include measures designed to address a number of concerns primarily raised around risk and liability, product service levels (including enhanced levels generally and more specifically in support for the Customer Service Guarantee Standard) and intellectual property.

Documents have been made available in both clean and marked up form to assist readers to readily identify the nature of the changes introduced since the last round of discussions.

As NBN Co indicated when it released WBA Version 4, and as further demonstrated in its commitment to the Contract Development Process, it continues to be our intention to engage with customers about the WBA both prior to, and following its publication as a Standard Form of Access Agreement.

NBN Co once again thanks all industry participants who have contributed to what has been a beneficial and constructive consultative process.

¹ Excluding NBN Co's Interim Satellite Service